As the first semester is wrapping up, I feel that I’m more stressed than ever with assignments and projects jumbled all due on the same day. Marketing has been a fun course but I’m dissatisfied in terms of the group project. Unlike my COMM 292 team, this team does not function the same. After just submitting the final assignment of the 30% project, I wanted to start reflecting on my contribution in causing such a terrible group experience.

Reading Eric’s blog on “The Failure of Team-Building Exercises” gave me more insight on not only how I played a role in this project but also what could have been improved to prevent some of the things that went on.

In terms of team-building exercises, I have to disagree with him because I believe having a strong bond and connection with a temporary team is the foundation of good teamwork later on. For example, the Fantasy Project helped my group become more personal and familiar with each other in a short span of time, whereas my marketing group did not go through a good team bonding session. We just got right off the bat to work. Even in terms of dividing work up, I think it’s crucial to know each team member’s strengths and in terms of which parts they are confident in working on.

Throughout my marketing project, I had been the sole leader AND follower as I not only led the project but I was also the one working on it myself. I have to agree with Eric on the fact that teams work more effectively when there is an established share of leadership. This is exactly what my marketing team lacked. Even when I gave everyone a chance to shine bright and show leadership in their specialization, I felt that no one really cared about the outcome of our project. What held us back was that we did not share a collective goal so I ended up carrying the whole team.

What realized from this failure group project is that there is no set formula for creating a successful team, although I applied the same skills I had learned in COMM 292 and used in my COMM 292 group. There was no sense of teamwork which the textbook says “we believe that the greatest value is realized when we work together”.

1. The Failure of Team-Building Exercises: Eric Ng

2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 79

The pursuit of success is a natural human drive and as humans, we all desire success in one form or another. I’ve always felt that my definition of success has been different from the status quo of words associated with success: “achieves, desires, aims and attains then accomplished”. Society puts too much emphasis on the outcome, and base off how successful someone is by what they’ve accomplished.

To me, success is a journey and this journey can only be called “success” if the foundation starts with happiness. Growing up we’ve been taught that achieving specific milestones of success will make us happy, but the greater truth is that success does not create happiness. It is happiness that creates success.

Unfortunately, the textbook does not define success nor happiness. Thus, I want to bring this matter to attention as I believe that it is very crucial to the topic of Organizational Behaviour because no matter how well an organization is managed, it will not succeed under the condition that it doesn’t consist of happy employees. The reason I say this is because I remember reading an article (1) about the toxic culture at Amazon and how unhappy and pressured its employees constantly felt. I’m sure it is easy to fulfill the needs on the building blocks of Maslow’s Hierarchy (2) but I’ve never once believed that this pyramid = happiness.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Recently, I picked up a book called The Happiness Equation, written by Neil Pasricha (3). He focuses on how most “successful” people aren’t truly happy people. They’re successful in terms of how others perceive them but the inner truth is that there are no feelings of reward. My favourite chapter so far is Secret #1: The First Thing You Must Do Before You Can Be Happy. Being happy is often easier said than done and this isn’t because our brains can be wrapped around negative thoughts, but it is that we fear these negative thoughts will take away our happiness.

I love how Aristotle said “happiness depends upon ourselves” , but I’ve always wondered, how do we get there? I am intrigued by how Neil answers this through a quote: “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it”. In others words happiness is an attitude, it is less an event and more an ongoing state of mind and a way of focusing on the picture at large because success isn’t made up of “happy moments” but rather a more positive outlook on all moments.

I believe it is important to address this topic of well-being when managing an organization in terms of culture, as this is highly interrelated to intrinsic motivation and many other self-factors that create a successful organization. To end it off my definition of success is holistic. Success can only be success if we begin, and end off with a big smile while being wholeheartedly happy.

1. Spicer, A. (2015, August 17). The tragedy behind Amazon’s toxic management fad | Andre Spicer. Retrieved November 25, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/17/amazon-management-fad-rank-yank-jeff-bezos
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 130.
3. Pasricha, Neil, Putnam, The Happiness Equation.

I recently watched a TED talk video on “Success, failure, and the drive to keep creating” (1). That’s a little ambiguous to throw out here, but the main point of the video focused on the process of identifying our inner motivation. Some people may fail a million times then lose their directional motivation, while others who have succeeded may have a harder time at grasping their next big goal.

While trying to absorb this all in, I realized that I too am stuck in figuring out my next big goal. And the biggest problem I have to admit is that I can no longer feel a motivational strength in me. Rewind back to a year ago when I felt unhappy and dissatisfied with my life, at least then, I had that fire in me that pushed me to do all that I can in order to change the state I was in and get to where I am today. A year later, feeling somewhat “rewarded” or maybe “successful”, my trade-off ended up being losing my flame.

In the textbook, motivation is described as “the intensity, direction, and persistence of effort a person shows in reaching a goal” (2). Especially after watching this TED talk, I found this rather vague of a definition. Questions arose in my mind, such as “What is the prequel to feeling motivated?”, “How do we remain persistent?”, or “Where and/or how can one find that feeling before becoming intrinsically motivated?”.

Not only did I find Elizabeth Gilbert’s (the author of Eat, Pray, Love) example tremendously empowering, but it also answered my questions.

We find our motivation by going back to the very beginning, the initial person we were and the feelings we felt during our times of value. It helps us understand what defines our “home” because that is what ultimately inspires, and encourages us to chase after our dreams. Our home could be anything we can think of, as long as we know that we love our “home” more than we could ever love ourselves. I believe this is essentially the remedy to keeping our flames burning and striking our continual motivation to achieve the next big thing. Thanks to Elizabeth, I’ve realized what my home is and I’m more than confident in chasing after for it.

1. Gilbert, Elizabeth. “Success, Failures and the drive to keep creating.” TED Talk Conference, March 2014, Vancouver, BC.
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 128.

While riding a rollercoaster –you may be screaming at the top of your lungs as your head is hanging down from the highest point, you may be crying as the wind forces itself on your face, or you may be laughing about how crazy that was by the end of the ride. A rollercoaster is the epitome of my emotions. Something that’s in and out of my control throughout the day and dependent on the situation.

After reading Aaron’s blog on Working Emotions it made me think of my experience while working at the UPS store this summer. I had the impression of a simple job with simple tasks as I laid foot into the store on my very first day. Everything seemed to have flown so well and being me, I faced everyone with a big smile on my face –was happy and enjoying my job because I felt that I had the knowledge to carry out each tasks to my fullest potential.

By the second to third week, that’s when it all hit me and my confidence was killed as my boss taught me how to print and customize special fliers–being the tech savvy person I assumed I was, I had information overload. I was expected to understand everything thoroughly off the bat while assisting in-store customers. Not only did I feel extremely bad about myself, but I also felt extremely overworked and pressured as we had gotten many printing orders via email. This pressure came mostly from myself, as a perfectionist I didn’t want to leave any trace of doubt that could backfire at me.

What I reflected from this experience is that it’s ok to feel scared and sad because everyone has to go through the learning process. It’s also important to pace yourself instead of setting a higher than achievable expectation.

1. Working Emotions -Aaron Mak 
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 252.

Everything just so happens to be going on at the same time. Recently, just after wrapping up on the Fantasy Project, I started to focus on my marketing project for Comm 296. As everyone knows, there are certain fears you feel about before getting into a team like “are we going to work cohesively?”, “are we going to get along?”, “is she/he going to put in the effort?”, or questions like “I hope there aren’t any freeloaders”. I like how I’m able to look at the two teams I’m in and compare what’s effective and working out and what could be improved to help us succeed.

I noticed that the clear distinction between my two teams is that in Comm 292, we’re able to become good friends through a project meanwhile my Comm 296 is purely a temporary group that rarely talks regarding matters other than our common goal: the marketing project. This meant that a took a way longer time for us to become productive because no one was willing to start the conversation.

The punctuated-equilibrium model in Chapter 6 (1) was constantly in my mind because it is essentially a time-line for a team’s performance. I think it’s a really important aspect to look at during team evaluation because it allows each team member to see individually what they could do in their part to shorten phase 1 and contribute in ways to help the team be move to a more productive phase.

My Comm 292 team members are definitely more  cooperrative and our phase 1 was rather short. We were able to transition quickly because of how well we understood each other. Up until this point, I cannot think of any negative comments to say about each individual member or my team as a whole. The success I can identify in my Comm 292 group is that we have a trusting relationship, in which was formed through the fantasy project. In comparison to Comm 296, I had to take on a leader role, or else there would’ve been no progress and no contact for a whole week.

Since each of my projects are split into several parts, it will be more effective to continuously come back to the model evaluation.

1. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 216.